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Whorioooooo.....

View from a stool Along with Dum Dum Girls, The Soft Pack and maybe blink-182 (you know, if that’s your thing), Beaters will probably put out one of next year’s most anticipated local records. A garage-rock brainchild of Andrew Montoya and Jeremy Rojas, the band has garnered a lot of national buzz and become the two main members’ primary focus despite playing in other bands, including Ale Mania and Dum Dum Girls.

But what do the two seemingly inseparable buds do for fun? They keep playing music, of course. Billed as their “only show ever,” the two debuted their new punk-rock side project, Whorio Goes to Clown School, last Sunday night to a crowd of a dozen or so at Soda Bar. Accompanied by two Craigs (Powerchords bassist Craig Barclift and Christmas Island guitarist Craig Oliver), Whorio played a 10-minute, six-song set that was entertaining despite Montoya repeatedly having to read the lyrics out of a composition book and Rojas making superfluous use of a bass drum.

“Let me see what song is next,” Montoya said as he flipped through the book. With that, he launched into “Pushing, Pusher, Pushes” with so much piss and vinegar that the band resembled a ragtag version of early Scott Walker or The Misfits, without the self-seriousness. The sparse crowd seemed into it, yelling and teasing the band in between songs and throwing Rojas’ broken drumstick back at him, narrowly missing his head. Punk rock, indeed.

After the show, Montoya confessed that there will, indeed, be more Whorio shows in the future. And while I certainly hope it doesn’t distract the two from Beaters, they could be onto something else with Whorio. Sure, it’s derivative and disposable, but even when these guys are just dicking around, it still sounds cool as hell.

STREAM/ORDER/DL the debut limited clear LP Spilt Milk by
Irish punk-slop-power-pop trio Oh Boland
Formed in 2012, the trio of songwriter Niall
Murphy(Guitars, Vocals) Eanna
MacDonnchadha (bass) and Simon McDonagh (drums/vocals) came together to form Oh
Boland over the course of drunken pub crawls in their small town of Tuam,
Ireland.The band eventually recorded a
couple of EPs with Brian Kelly of So Cow, and began venturing out into Galway
City, leading to involvement with Dublin-based collective Popical Island and
their release of the Delphi split LP with fellow Ireland indie-poppers Me and My
Dog. The Delphi recordings brought them
together with producer Mark Chester, who makes his own music as Ginnels and
plays in No Monster Club. After the band realized they were sitting on a number
of songs, they decided to go back in with Chester to record this first
full-length, Spilt Milk, over the
course of two days over Halloween weekend 2014 in a cottage in one of the most
isolated parts o…

First off, a moment of reflection about the Oakland fires. I've been in my own state of shock and grief and am slowly getting back to focusing on this other stuff here. My thoughts go out to everyone involved. I had friends who were there that night and made it out safely; I had quite a few more who were close to going and decided not to. The first show I ever attended in the Bay was at a warehouse (the French Fry Factory), and the first show I ever played there was at the Ghost Town Gallery. I have more musical ties to friends in the Bay and Oakland specifically than anywhere else outside of where I live, and the creative freedom and resourcefulness of the music and arts community there is the richest that I know of in the country. There have been many thoughtful posts and articles regarding that scene in particular, the culture at large, and the nature of warehouse spaces like Ghost Ship. I was asked to do an interview for NBC San Diego and only agreed to help spread that messa…